Meta’s Twitter competitor, Threads, is experiencing a highly successful launch. Threads has already garnered over 30 million sign-ups in less than 24 hours of its launch.
“Wow, 30 million sign ups as of this morning. Feels like the beginning of something special, but we’ve got a lot of work ahead to build out the app,” Meta CEO Zuckerberg wrote on Threads on Thursday. Previously, he claimed that 10 million people signed up in seven hours.
“Threads is where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what’ll be trending tomorrow,” according to Meta. The app went live on Apple and Android app stores in 100 countries excluding the EU member states.
Meta’s new social media platform aims to win over users from Elon Musk’s troubled platform by offering longer posts, celebrity endorsements, and a striking resemblance to its competitor.
Features
- Threads is an app for sharing text updates and joining public conversations. You log in using your Instagram account.
- Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length.
- Your feed includes threads posted by people you follow and recommended content from new creators you haven’t discovered yet
How to join? This “text-based conversation app” is linked to Instagram, with the listing teasing a Twitter-like microblogging experience. You can use your Instagram account to log in and your username and verification will carry over.
Which platforms does Meta own?
Meta owns several popular platforms, the most well-known being Facebook. Originally created as a social network for Harvard students in 2004, it later expanded to include all university students in North America before becoming available to users worldwide in 2006. Meta also acquired Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Messenger is a separate entity owned by Meta.
Meta vs Twitter
Mark Zuckerberg broke his decade-long Twitter silence to express his excitement about Threads. With Twitter struggling, Threads is expected to generate significant engagement and emerge as a prominent alternative.
— Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd) July 6, 2023
Built by the Instagram team, Thread’s layout and features resemble Twitter. However, the Meta platform offers several advantages over Twitter.
Users can create posts up to 500 characters long, compared to Twitter’s 280-character limit. Additionally, Threads allows users to share videos of up to five minutes in length and post content as links on other platforms. Users have control over their experience, being able to unfollow, block, restrict, or report other users. They can also filter out replies containing specific words.
Why Threads?
Meta’s launch of Threads comes amidst the backlash over Twitter imposing limits on the number of tweets users can view each day. The limits restrict verified users to reading 10,000 tweets a day, along with 1,000 tweets for unverified accounts and 500 for new unverified accounts. These restrictions, which the billionaire Tesla CEO explained as a measure to prevent unauthorized scraping of potentially valuable data, have sparked criticism.
Another controversial change implemented by Twitter is the requirement for users to be verified in order to use TweetDeck, the online dashboard that allows users to organize and easily monitor the accounts they follow. This new policy will be enforced in 30 days and seems to be aimed at generating additional revenue. Many businesses and media organizations use the platform to manage and track different feeds.
Why has Threads not launched in the EU?
Meta’s Twitter competitor is not yet available in the EU due to regulatory concerns. Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri’s comment appears to reference the Digital Markets Act, the EU’s new competition rules governing how large online platforms use their market power. “We don’t want to launch anything that isn’t forward-compatible with what we know and what we think is coming,” Mosseri told The Verge.
Privacy concerns: Several users have raised privacy concerns regarding Threads, particularly its US version. The platform informs users that it collects a wide range of their data, including health and financial information, browsing histories, location, purchases, contacts, search history, and sensitive information.
